I don't play video games at all frequently these days, but I did pick up Sleeping Dogs on sale a few weeks ago.

Man, I haven't had this much fun playing a game in a decade or longer. It's as funny and quietly subversive as Vice City or Anachronox from that era. I think it's the characters and storyline that make the difference for me. I haven't finished it yet (I'm really slow at playing through games), but did anyone else play it?

On another note, do any of you watch video games as (and I hate the word) eSports? I find myself tuning into a few Starcraft 2 tournaments here and there.

On another note, do any of you watch video games as (and I hate the word) eSports? I find myself tuning into a few Starcraft 2 tournaments here and there.

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I enjoy watching StarCraft 2 quite a bit. I even went to the NASL finals in Toronto a few months ago to see it live. I find myself watching the game even more than I play it these days.

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Cool!

Yeah, I don't play it at all (only ever did for a short while) but enjoy watching it a lot. It's one of those games where the fun strategic elements only really emerge when players have superb core mechanics & basic macro, such that the strategy & micro can come into play. I'm simply not good enough at the basics - and not willing to put in the time to get good enough - to get up to even a moderately decent level of play. I'm a much more casual type of game player, and tend to prefer playing games that make me laugh.

Re: NASL Toronto; IIRC, that was the tournament where Stephano kicked playboy model Lauren Elise in the face during his victory dance.

WCS finals this week should be decent, but Dreamhack Winter will probably be more fun, I think. Some of the groups are nuts.

I wish Blizzard (or someone independent) would put together a proper World Starcraft Pro Tour, the way the ATP or PGA do for tennis or golf. All the separate organisations would still exist but would be part of a wider, more meaningful series of tournaments. That would really raise the profile of the game and create more of an ongoing storyline to each year with the associated hype and interest.

Black Ops 2 - I don't say this lightly, and I hate to say it at all as I loved the original BlOps - but BlOps2 is probably the worst FPS I've ever had the misfortune of playing.

I honestly can't understand how they've managed to make a game not only worse than MW3, but THIS much worse.

After MW3 I seriously contemplated NOT getting it, but caved based on the strength of the original BlOps game. Sadly, this is nothing like that, and far more like the other Treyarch games, simply dreadful.

Spawning - awful. I've lost count of the number of times where I've spawned next to exploding cars, into the middle of airstrikes, into direct enemy fire. There's no spawn protection whatsoever.

Head-glitching - How is this still in the game? A constant criticism of MW3, and it's STILL there in BlOps2 - do you NOT listen to feedback at all? Worse still, when I manage to hit them in the head (it must be the head as it's the only part of them showing), I get multiple hit markers! WTF?! How are you NOT dead?

Quickscoping - Another constant complaint. How do Treyarch respond? By making it even easier to do. Genius.

Maps - They're all near enough the same size, where's the variety? No large maps, the only tiny map is a revamped BlOps1 map.

Lag comp - Yet another complaint about MW3, and if anything it's now worse. Playing the game on a fibre connection - might as well not even bother. See opponent first, fire first, dead first. Absolute b0ll0cks.

Hit detection - You can see how poor this is in the killcams. If you hipfire, close misses randomly register as hits. The worst one I saw though was someone's final kill killcam, where the bullet actually hit the rifle butt of his secondary weapon that was on his back. Somehow, hitting that killed him. Seriously you couldn't make this sh*t up.

I become a member of a site where I can rent video games after my experience with Halo 4.

The first game I played was the latest Black Ops. The levels are short, and barely register. The strike force mission I played - defend a site in India - was an abject failure. I like the graphics, but if I can't play a game successfully because of design flaws, than the graphics aren't really that important, are they? I, also, didn't like the feeling that I was being railroaded into decisions and actions I would consider lacking in common sense and that exemplify why my character is a prime candidate for the Darwin award. For instance, what idiot would run a horse at full speed into the path of a tank?

I have lined up XCOM, Far Cry 3, and the complete Walking Dead video game. These games are highly rated, and there does seem to be some freedom given to the player to decide how they will play.